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Fossify Gallery is now on F-Droid, and Simple Gallery got removed due to a proprietary dependency (beehaw.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Fossify Gallery on the official F-Droid repo

The removal isn't directly related to the buyout/fork. Simple Gallery was taken off of F-Droid due to a dependency on the nonfree Google VR being discovered by IzzySoft¹ ². Fossify's fork has removed the dependent features to be compliant³.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why?

If it ain't broke, why does it need an update?

I have apps that are 10 years old and work fine. This "continual update" thing is just so weird.

I have 20 year old apps on Windows that still work just fine.

Some of my Android apps' newer versions have issues that I don't care for, so I run the older version (e.g. Foldersync, Tasks.org).

The last version of SMT apps before the buyout should work indefinitely...they are simple after all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The SMT apps after the buyout, are not necessarily bad either, it's up to the new owners whether they want to keep a FOSS version as advertisement, or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Aren't there outside contributors? How can they relicense it without their permission?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

They can't relicense it without permission, what they've done right now is fully allowed under the GPL: they've started charging a fee for the binary.

The GPL allows anyone to:

Offer the source for free to anyone.
Charge a fee for a copy of the source.
Charge a fee for a binary, while offering free, or for a nominal fee, access to the source.
Not offer the source to anyone who hasn't paid.

So they've switched from case 1, to case 3 (and maybe 4).

At any moment they can keep any part of the apps, or any of the apps, back in case 1, while asking for a fee to access the other versions (like the "Pro" ones). If they did so, then anyone who paid for a version, could ask for the source and decide to publish it for free as in case 1... or not, it's the buyer's choice now.

The "kind of dick move" effect, is that F-Droid was carrying a "Simple Gallery" version which now shows a popup requiring people to pay.

Going forward, F-Droid is carrying the Fossify Gallery, which is the same source with changed branding and no popup. SMT could still play nice and offer a "non-Pro" version of the apps that could get carried by F-Droid, which could lead someone to pay for the "Pro" version. Equally, random people could pay for the "Pro" version and make the source available to Fossify for free so they can port the changes, then have the resulting app carried by F-Droid.

So it's up to the new SMT owners whether they want to play ball, play hard to get, or get forked away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

"or get forked anyway"

I see what you did there...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I know that's allowed under the GPL, but you mentioned them "choosing to keep a FOSS version", which if they didn't do that would mean relicensing. It's still FOSS here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I meant it in the sense they could discontinue the FOSS version and roll their own privative one in its place. They're "simple" apps after all, wouldn't be too hard to make a simple clone. What they've really bought is a trademark/placeholder (along or not with a company, I haven't looked much into the details).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

they don't care and as long as no court ruled, they do what they want, which will probably work out for them